Is VIRC Stock A Buy?

With the first-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the second quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC).

Is VIRC stock a buy? The smart money was taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets inched up by 1 lately. Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 3. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that VIRC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 3 hedge funds in our database with VIRC holdings at the end of December.

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Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies

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Do Hedge Funds Think VIRC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At Q1’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in VIRC over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Minerva Advisors, managed by David P. Cohen, holds the largest position in Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC). Minerva Advisors has a $2.7 million position in the stock, comprising 1.5% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Thomas E. Lynch of Mill Road Capital Management, with a $0.7 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Renaissance Technologies, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Minerva Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC), around 1.46% of its 13F portfolio. Mill Road Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.24 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VIRC.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names have jumped into Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC) headfirst. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, assembled the most outsized position in Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC). Citadel Investment Group had $0 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC) but similarly valued. We will take a look at ICC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICCH), CBM Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBMB), Bellerophon Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLPH), Vinco Ventures, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIG), Alterity Therapeutics Limited (NASDAQ:ATHE), VirTra, Inc. (NASDAQ:VTSI), and Ballantyne Strong Inc (NYSE:BTN). This group of stocks’ market valuations match VIRC’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2 million. That figure was $4 million in VIRC’s case. Bellerophon Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLPH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Vinco Ventures, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIG) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Virco Mfg. Corporation (NASDAQ:VIRC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VIRC is 66. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on VIRC as the stock returned 19% since the end of Q1 (through 6/11) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.

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